DST-705 Language, Culture, and Power

Course Overview

This course begins by exploring key issues faced by minority language communities, with special emphasis on the world’s linguistic diversity, language endangerment, and revitalization. After gaining a broad understanding of the dynamic intersections of language, culture and power, students will examine the historical role of language ideologies relating to signed languages, beginning with classical thought and continuing through the formation of deaf education in the 18th century and the medicalization of deaf bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the end, students should be able to identify and explain intersections of philosophical, linguistic, educational, medical, scientific, and anthropological discourses which influenced the vitality of sign languages and deaf communities in the 21st century. Developing awareness of this phonocentric heritage helps to equip students in developing strategies for linguistic and cultural revitalization of sign languages and deaf communities.